American Nathan Chen achieved a spectacular redemption when he claimed the men’s figure skating title in dazzling fashion at the Beijing Olympics, completing a four-year journey to the exhilarating tunes of Elton John on Thursday.
The 22-year-old, who left empty-handed after a meltdown in Pyeongchang in 2018, stood by the edge of the rink to soak up the atmosphere during warm-up and then skated carefreely to “Rocket Man” to add to his world record in the short programme for a total of 332.60.
Wearing a Vera Wang-designed orange and purple top decorated with stars in space in a nod to his medley of Elton John songs, Chen displayed power, grace and precision, effortlessly landing his quadruple jumps as he triggered some rare cheering from a usually near-silent crowd.
Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama (310.05) was a distant second and fellow Japanese Shoma Uno (293.00) came third, but ‘Rocket Chen’ showed he was a class above as he landed his fourth quadruple jump.
“I never really thought that I’d be able to actually make it this far in my career. I’d always, of course, dreamed about making an Olympics and winning the Olympics, but I was like, that’s hard, I don’t know if I can make that happen,” Chen said.
“I haven’t really had time to process fully, but it’s amazing so far.”
Yuzuru Hanyu, who was hoping to win the event for a third time in a row, finished fourth on 283.21. All attention was on the Japanese great after his long-awaited, delayed arrival in Beijing, but the 27-year-old fell out of contention with a disastrous short programme.
He was also looking to become the first skater to land the quadruple Axel in competition but failed to deliver, falling again on a quadruple Salchow.
